Hoshen

Dates: 10.7.2022-20.8.2022

Artists: Mor Afgin,  Regev Amrani, Eitan Ben Moshe, Asaf Elkalai, Eliyahu Fatal (Eli Petel), Michal Helfman, Ohad Meromi, Adam Rabinowitz,  Moshe Roas, Netally Schlosser, Maayan Shahar,  Lihi Turjeman

Curator: Hila Cohen Schneiderman & Michal Helfman

About the Exhibition

The group exhibition Hoshen came about through an experimental process that took place at Bat Yam Museum of Art, centered on the need to restore the power of the exhibition visiting experience and reclaim the ritual of viewing the artwork and its details. The unusual installation of Hoshen, which takes its name from the sacred breastplate of the Temple’s priests, offers the visitor a slow-art experience: extended observation and lingering in the presence of each piece, and a slow reverberating rhythm that slowly unravels the hidden links between the works, staying with the visitors long after they have left the museum. 

At an age when speed is everything, and in light of our superficial and nonstop encounter with images on our social media feed, Hoshen deliberately reduces the number of works displayed in it, to allow each piece to stand alone at the center of a space. The exhibition offers the museum as a constellation of planets, where each artwork has distinct properties and singular qualities. Yet in their solitude, they also hold one another. It explores the question of the relationship between the individual and the single artwork and the system that holds them. The exhibition features young artists like Mor Afgin and Asaf Elkalai alongside established artists like Adam Rabinowitz or Michal Helfman. Many of the works in the exhibition hold, or search for, a spiritual quality. Eliyahu Fatal’s work functions as a Hoshen artifact of sorts, a color palette comprising eight colorful stones. Michal Helfman’s work, a rotating vase that fills and empties, acts like a moon substitute, moving and holding the space around it. 

Other works are related to the body and to the understanding that art is experienced through the body and not only through the eyes. The work of Regev Amrani emits vapor and smoke when the viewer comes closer to it; Ohad Meromi’s work offers its heart to those who enter the museum, as though asking them to meet each work with an open heart, with attention to every detail.

Photography: Elad Sarig